It is very common among computer users that after a passage of time they notice a considerable change in the performance of their system. This manifests itself as a longer boot up time, sporadic error messages and frequently occurring system freeze-up. There are only a limited number of solutions to this kind of a problem. Either you format the hard drive and reinstall Windows or follow a complete set of procedures from trimming down the registry to defragmenting the hard drive.

 This month we bring you TuneUp Utilities 2008 which will make your Windows operating system run much faster. There are six main modules in this optimization tool. The ‘Increase performance’ modules consists of ‘TuneUp Drive Defrag’ which defragments the hard disks, ‘TuneUp StartUp Manager’ controls which programs require to be executed at Windows startup, ‘TuneUp System Optimizer’ which apart from speeding up the system, offers tips for system configuration, ‘TuneUp Registry Defrag’ corrects physical errors in the registry and defragments it, ‘TuneUp Memory Optimizer’ monitors and optimizes free memory in the background.

The ‘Free up disk space’ module removes unnecessary files and backups, deactivates selected Windows functions that take up particularly large amounts of disk space, and comes with a ‘Disk Space Explorer’ that provides information about the disk space usage of your system and helps you clean up your hard disks. The ‘Maintain Windows’ module contains the ‘TuneUp 1-Click Maintenance’ feature which cleans up the system and defragments the local hard drives at the click of a mouse button, and ‘Registry Cleaner’ removes invalid entries and references from your system. ‘Disk Doctor’ finds and corrects errors on the drives, ‘Repair Wizard’ corrects frequently occurring Windows problems quickly and easily, ‘Undelete’ recovers files that have been deleted from the Recycle Bin, ‘System Control’ allows you to control the look and feel of the Windows interface, ‘Styler’ lets you change the Windows symbols, logon screens, the Welcome screen and the visual style, ‘Process Manager’ allows you to manage currently running programs, ‘Registry Editor’ helps you to edit and browse the registry, ‘Shredder’ deletes important (selected) files securely, ensuring that they cannot be recovered later, ‘System Information’ provides comprehensive information on your computer, and the ‘Uninstall Manager’ uninstalls programs you do not really use anymore.

 Click on ‘TuneUp StartUp Manager’ to bring up a list of applications that run automatically on system startup. Press the ‘Categories’ icon on the toolbar to view a breakup of the list by registry and user, and also to manage installed services that are started automatically at system startup. To make changes to the startup list, simply uncheck the box corresponding to the application to delete it or go to ‘File | Add program’ to insert a new tool.

‘TuneUp System Optimizer’ has two components, one for the system and the other for the Internet. To accelerate downloads and Internet surfing hit the ‘Internet Optimization’ link, select your connection from the drop down list, for instance, ‘DSL up to 512kbit’ and press ‘Next’ to let the tool analyze the current settings. Based on the analysis results, you can choose to optimize your Web browsers and TCP/IP settings. Similarly, running the ‘System Advisor’ will bring up a list of changes to implement.

 ‘TuneUp Registry Defrag’ is a wizard style interface that takes you through the steps of reducing fragments, repairing structural defects, and recovering unused memory space. Once the registry analysis is complete, which requires that there be no applications running in the background, predicts the size of the optimized registry that will be implemented by pressing the ‘Finish’ button.

Step 5: Free up the system’s memory

‘TuneUp MemOptimizer’ has three main tabs. The first ‘Overview’ provides a visual graph of the real time system resources—free physical memory and free space in paging file. There are two ways to optimize the memory, manually or automatically. The ‘AutoOptimize’ settings can be changed by clicking the ‘Change settings’ link in the Overview tab, and tweaking the numbers for optimizing and increasing free memory in MB. Alternatively, switch to the ‘Manual Optimization’ tab and use the slider control to set the amount of memory you want to free up and click the ‘Clear Now’ button. There is also an ‘Empty Clipboard’ button to delete data that is no longer needed.

Step 6: Free up disk space

 From the main application window, press the ‘Free up disk space’ tab. The program will start analyzing for any unnecessary files, older backups and Windows processes. Once the analysis is complete, simply click the links to choose which functions and data you want deleted. For instance, the program will recommend deleting all but the most recent restore point, emptying the temporary files folder, deleting the Web browser files and so on.

From the main application window, select and click on the ‘Solve problems’ tab, and open up ‘TuneUp Disk Doctor’. The Disk Doctor wizard automatically checks the selected drives for errors in their file systems and will automatically correct them to prevent any data loss. There are two Analysis options, Normal and Thorough, the latter one also locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.